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Archives for June 2006

The Size Of Our World is a great visual comparison of Earth, the other bodies in our solar system and some stars within our galaxy. While the site is far from polished, this simple page does a great job displaying the enormous scale of the larger planets and stars compared to our rock and each other. Link via BoingBoing.

Erik Spiekermann, (author of Stop Stealing Sheep & Find Out How Type Works)takes to task the designer’s and executives involved in branding this year’s World Cup, criticizing the mascot and logo and in general beautifully stating the problems with design by committee: “It’s like designing a joke, and you can’t design a joke. I think the original design assignment must have been all over the place. With all the things that had to be avoided and then all the things they wanted included, it was impossible to come up with something good.”

Mr. Spiekermann provides some interesting illumination concerning Germany’s internal view of its external image, and how it likely played a huge part in many of the choices.

Instead of harnessing this tremendous opportunity to shine on the world stage, Deutschland stumbled into mediocrity. Thus we are presented with a boring lion and a silly logo.

Sywan, one of the two folks working on MagicTracer just dropped me a note that they have a new version out. It looks like a great tool, made even better with this 1.5 release. Coincidentally, Sarah and I were talking the other day about the availability of software that will take a raster image and automagically convert it to vector/paths for Illustrator. Sadly it isn’t available on OS X, so neither of us will be able to use it. Sigh.